Lottery
A competition whose prizes depend on chance, in which tokens or numbers are distributed and drawn at random; esp. a public contest run by a state or charity to raise money. A lottery can be as simple as a game in which tokens are distributed to participants for a chance at a prize, or as complex as a series of steps involving skill in order to advance. For instance, a basketball team’s draft pick is a sort of lottery in which the names of 14 teams are thrown into a pool and, at random, a number is selected to determine the first pick.
People who play the lottery, however, are not blind to the odds of winning, and most know that there is a good chance they won’t win. Still, they enter the lottery with all the irrational belief that somehow, someday, their lucky numbers will come up. And the truth is, there may be a little bit of luck involved, but most of the odds are against them.
Lottery is a part of modern life, and it has become more common in recent years. It began, Cohen argues, as states that had enjoyed relative prosperity in the immediate post-World War II period found themselves straining to balance budgets, with rising inflation and the cost of the Vietnam War. Rather than raise taxes or cut services, many of these states turned to the lottery as an alternative. But is it really a fair trade?